TESTING COSMOLOGICAL MODELS WITH HIGH REDSHIFT CLUSTER TEMPERATURES

ABSTRACT

We propose to determine the gas temperature and heavy element abundances for three z~0.3 clusters of galaxies, which will complete our survey of eleven high X-ray luminosity distant clusters selected from the ROSAT All Sky Survey. With eight clusters in this sample exceeding 10^{45} ergs/sec, this sample contains very massive clusters whose properties are the most sensitive to the underlying cosmology. Thus, comparing the temperature distributions of these distant clusters with present epoch high luminosity clusters can constrain cosmological models.